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You know the drill, there was the guy that was kind of dweebish in high school. Not too many friends, got picked on for his forward thinking style (Chucks before they were cool kind of thing) and his penchant for out of mainstream music and insisting on listening to vinyl instead of CD.

Fast-forward to your fifteen year reunion and he is a successful stock broker at Ima, Asshole & Stien, and he shows up with his obviously an ex-stripper girlfriend and status quo BMW 3 Series M model macho dick car.

Do I sound angry? Sorry about that, I am one of the few people around the office that like and support Apple, but being that I do work for Microsoft, some of the latest “Mac vs. PC” ads are starting to work my nerves a bit.

First it was the “Screw you Windows, we can run Office too.” Conveniently forgetting that WE write office for them and if we stopped they would be in a serious disadvantage. Second came the iLife commercial advertising that while the Mac comes with all this cool software, Windows comes with stuff like Calculator. Nevermind the bundle of games that are included now, or the video editor, photo catalog and editor, really all the stuff in iLife except Garageband.

The latest is this monster that seems to be making fun of Microsoft for spending money on advertising? Seriously? How many ads do you see Apple put out that are specifically targeted to badmouthing Windows, not really advertising their own product. I would be willing to bet that Apple spent more on music licensing for Cold Play than we spent on ad production entirely!

So that’s how I am starting to feel about the Apple marketing machine, you were cool and chic when you were the underdog, now that you are building momentum, it’s starting to come off and arrogant and, most of the time completely not true.

So you live in a Mac/PC hybrid environment and you regularly have to share files between them, right? Well, I don’t think it’s that uncommon, and there are several ways to tackle this problem, but I thought I would share with you my approach.

First we have to start out with a little bit of code for you, the tool of choice is Script Editor, which can be found in /Applications/Apple Script. First let’s start with a little code, er, script:

   1: tell application "Finder"

   2:     mount volume "afp://UserName:Password@IPAddress/ShareName"

   3: end tell

   4:  

   5: tell application "Finder"

   6:     mount volume "smb://ComputerName;UserName:Password@ComputerName/ShareName"

   7: end tell

Now, depending on your purpose, you may only need one of these two tell clauses. The first one is for connecting to shares on OS X systems, the second is for connecting to shares on Windows systems, which is the purpose for this post, so we will concentrate on that.

Fire up script editor and paste in lines 5-7. The tell application function tells the Finder application to perform the embedded commands. The command inside is mount volume which you use to, that’s right, mount a volume. In this case we will be using a random share named “mystuff” on a fictional PC called “mypc.” Your username will be “myusername” and your password is, can you guess? That’s right, “mypassword.”

The mount line in this instance would be:

mount volume “smb://mypc;myusername:mypassword@mypc/mystuff”

Pretty self explanatory really. Now the trick comes in, with this script edited, choose File, Save As…, give it an application, change the file format to “Application” and make sure “Run Only” is checked. and “Startup Screen” and “Stay Open” are unchecked.

Save it and you have an application that is single function to connect to your share. Now we are getting somewhere. Copy this file somewhere save, in my Macs I copy it to the root of “Macintosh HD” and then lets go to System Preferences.

Under the “Accounts” Preferences pane, select “Login Items” for the account you use to log in, and click the small + button to add an item to the list. I called my login application “ConnectHPVista64” and in the screenshot you can see it in my list:

I check the hide box so I don’t see it run and then I am done. Log off and log in and you should see your the dock icon bounce for a few seconds and then you should see the volume on your desktop (assuming you haven’t disabled them from showing.)

That’s it, hope this helps someone.

There are several like me at Microsoft. Some more extreme, some less, and there are also those there that would like to hang me for my transgressions. (right Scott?) The truth remains that I work at as an Engineer at Microsoft and most of my home computing is done on a Mac.

Of course I am not all Mac. I have two Vista PCs that I use regularly and I have no dislike or hard feelings towards them at all. The reality is that several of my personal hobbies happen to lend themselves to the Mac easily. Of course they can be done on the PC, but I prefer to do them on the Mac.

Now let me be clear on one point, Video, Audio and Photography can be done and done quite well on the PC, often with the same software from the same companies (Protools, Adobe Premiere, Photoshop, etc) But I have just gotten used to doing them on Mac, and long before I ever came to Microsoft.

That being said, there are some things I just don’t do on a Mac. Application and Web Development are two things I have yet to get comfortable with on my Macs.

So what is it exactly that brought me to the Mac and what has kept me there? Protools is the software that led me there. Digidesign’s digital audio application is dual platform, and when I finally dropped the cash for the audio interface and software, Windows 98 is what I was running it on. I purchased a Dell Precision workstation around the year 2000 with dual monitors and as much ram as I could get at the time, about 1GB I think, and about 40GB of hard drive space. It was a beast of a machine and it was optimized and dedicated to running Protools..

The problem was that the computer just didn’t run it very well. I had issues with pops and clicks, sometimes tracks stuttered while recording and it just wasn’t stable. After a few months of toiling away, getting more and more frustrated with it, I decided to give Mac a shot and got what I think was around an 866Mhz G4 PowerMac.

Protools installed quickly and I was up and recording flawlessly from the start. Now this isn’t always the most practical approach both economically and realistically. Most people use their computers for more than one thing.

It’s interesting how much an impression like that lasts on you. It’s really still there, although intelligently I realize that Windows runs some very stable recording systems on Protools, Sonar, Cubase and the like.. I just had a bad experience, switched and never had a reason to switch back.

These days I am still running my studio on a Mac, and it has crept into other parts of my world as well. When the intel switch came I decided it would be a great thing to get the Macbook Pro as my laptop and be able to run both Windows and OS X on it. I have been on the Apple laptop for over a year now and wouldn’t switch back to a PC only for anything. I have Vista installed into Bootcamp and available through VMWare Fusion, and 90% of the time I run it in OS X. Before I switched to the Mac Pro for my studio, it was based on a 24” iMac which I just couldn’t bear to sell, so I kept it. Now that it’s not my audio computer anymore, I use it more than ever.

There are things that I still use PCs for daily. I have a 64-bit Vista Media Center machine that is our iTunes server, storage server and gaming computer. I have a 32-bit Vista computer that I use for work email, work IM, VPN, web design, software development and managing our network and other computers via Windows Live OneCare.

At work I use Vista machines for my desktop and laptop and I don’t find myself “missing” my Macs at all (except maybe Quicksilver) so I don’t want anyone to think that my point is that I love Macs more than PCs, after all “I am a PC” ☺ But what I am saying is my home has room for both.

So what does this all mean? What is the point? The point is that there is room for both for anyone, even someone who works for Microsoft. The computer I use is suited to the task I choose, so to speak.

First let me say that I am a Microsoft employee and this post is pure opinion and not an official position of my employer. That being said, reading my morning dose of feeds I have already came across nearly a dozen articles whining that Windows 7 looks just like Windows Vista.

Not to go directly at our buddies down at 1 Infinite Loop, but hasn’t OS X looked the same for like, um 10 years or something? OS X was released in 1999 at version 10.0, and here we are at the edge of 2009 and they are still on 10?

In 1999, when OS X first hit the scene (as a server component first), we were on Windows 98 Second Edition. Microsoft was still on Version 4 of Windows which included Windows 95, NT 4, 98 and 98 SE. That’s four official OS releases off of the 4.0 framework. It had been a period of four years, one OS per year.

That’s a decent life span out of a code base and it was time to move on. In that same time period, Apple shipped OS X 10.0 Server. Now let me introduce a quote that I think might ring somewhat familiar if only you take out the words Mac OS X and insert Windows Vista in their place.

“The initial version was slow, not feature complete, and had very few applications available at the time of its launch, mostly from independent developers. While many critics suggested that the operating system was not ready for mainstream adoption, they recognized the importance of its initial launch as a base on which to improve. Simply releasing Mac OS X was received by the Macintosh community as a great accomplishment, for attempts to completely overhaul the Mac OS had been underway since 1996, and delayed by countless setbacks. Following some bug fixes, kernel panics became much less frequent.”

Wow doesn’t that sound familiar. Are you saying those boys have those kinds of problems too when they change the entire architecture of their OS?

To the right you see a screen shot of what OS X 10.0 (Cheetah) looked like the year it was introduced.

I’ll let you draw your own opinions while we follow this timeline forward and compare the look, the innovations and the general market sentiments of the two OSes as they have blazed their way through the last decade. It’s not pretty at times for both, but I think you will draw the same conclusion that I do. Microsoft Windows has changed a great deal more than OS X in the last 10 years. The changes from Windows Vista to Windows 7 are not cosmetic, the power is in the code. Moving to the Windows Server 2008 Codebase is a huge win that should not be ignored because the buttons aren’t shinier.

February 2000 – Microsoft Ships Windows 2000

If I had to take a pulse, I would bet that until XP really matured, Windows 2000 would be considered the most stable Windows OS ever. I remember standing in awe at not having to reboot to change an IP address.

Now if you were to compare Windows 2000 to Windows 98 SE at this point, you might be tempted to follow today’s current media whirlwind and say “But Windows 2000 doesn’t look very different from Windows 98 at all, hell, it kinda looks just like Windows 95!”

But I am sure history and experience would tell you quite a different story. Windows 2000 was the first time I felt Windows was truly stable. The first time that the OS at heart was rock solid and performed it’s duties without getting in the way.

Of course you will remember, or at least I do, in the beginning there were huge legions of missing drivers. It took hardware makers ages to catch up, but when they did, it was a force.

Now at this point Mac OS X Server would be out for nearly two years before OS X would ship as a desktop product and the space between the initial launch of OS X 10.0 Cheetah and OS X 10.1 Puma would be a gap of mere months (March to September).

They boosted performance a bit and added DVD playback. It was released as a free upgrade to 10.0 users. In January 2002, Apple announced that Mac OS X would be the default OS on Macs. That’s a timeframe of less than one year before they made OS 9 obsolete.

Microsoft would later be lambasted for announcing the demise of Windows XP 17 months after Windows Vista shipped.

October 2001 – Microsoft Ships Windows XP

With the amount of petitions and users clinging to it, one could make an argument that Windows XP is the most beloved Microsoft Windows version ever.

Windows XP provided Microsoft’s first significant UI update since Windows 95. It was also quite different under the hood making for a stable OS that is still being used and will continue to be for several years.

Windows XP was also Microsoft’s first real entry into 64-bit operating systems. While 64-bit Windows wouldn’t catch fire until the release of Vista, the milestone is no less significant.

Windows XP has had 3 service packs in it’s lifetime and depending on the installed service pack, is scheduled to be supported until 2014.

In August 2002, just over a year after 10.1, Apple shipped OS X 10.2 Jaguar. In a years time they had introduced over 150 enhancements according to Apple. These amounted to a more performant operating system that was more stable but looked fundamentally the same. Sound familiar?

This was also the time when Apple finally let go of the “Happy Mac” logo and went to the grey apple screen that is now so familiar. CHIME ON!

It’s interesting to note that we have fast forwarded several years and while Windows has seen 98, 2000 and XP, Apple is still rocking 10.1. Sure numbers are semantics, but it’s hard to call anything up to this point revolutionary.

January 2007 – Microsoft Ships Vista

Wow, that was a big gap, 6 years, and one Microsoft caught a lot of grief for. That’s a hell of a long time to go without a new operating system for anyone. Of course we did update with three service packs in that time frame. The OS has been kicking along quite well for all this time and so much so that now that Vista is out, everyone wants to know why they should change?

The laundry list of changes to the UI and underlying framework for security and interoperability is huge, but to most people, it just looks pretty. It’s glossy, it has a totally new UI.

The hardware requirement bar has been raised quite a bit but for some reason those same people that have been rocking XP for 6 years on likely the same hardware, can’t figure out why the new one doesn’t run so hot. I could make a fair guess but that’s not the point of this post now is it

In October 2007, Apple introduced OS X 10.5 Leopard. While Windows Vista was sleeping, we skipped right past OS X 10.3 Panther and OS X 10.4 Tiger. Apple added more performance gains in 10.3 and what they called an extensive update to the user interface. I’ll let you be the judge.

10.2 Jaguar	10.3 Panther	10.4 Tiger

I can’t say I am seeing drastic changes here, especially not “extensive.” As a fair comparative, here is a fast forward comparison of Windows and OS X for the last decade.

	2000	2007
Windows
OS X

So there you have it folks. OS changes are incremental, it is what it is. In 10 years we have come a long way in both camps. Sure the truth is version numbers and screen shots don’t amount to much in the real world, but as pure marketing fluff, it’s easy to look at things this way and see the point I am trying to make.

Don’t expect Windows 7 to look drastically different. The changes aren’t always so close to the surface. Keep tuned for more open and honest commentary on it as it’s made available to play with.

Today I was contacted by the folks at KallOut to tell me about their product that competes with the Hyperwords Firefox Plugin I blogged about earlier.

KallOut is what Hyperwords is, but for more than just Firefox. I am calling this a preview, because as I am sitting upstairs tonight blogging on my Macbook Pro, I can’t actually test this software. I can, however, tell you what it does and where to get it if you think it’s something that might be useful to you.

According to the site:

Find it Faster with KallOut

Selection-based search allows you to get results up to 10-times faster than a traditional browser-based search. Instead of opening a browser every time you need to search, simply select any word or phrase, hover over the menu target and choose the appropriate KallOut menu item. Learn More »

Supercharge your searches with BestGuess™

The BestGuess system matches your selection with the most relevant KallOut choices whenever you select a term. If you are unsure about a topic, there is a good chance that BestGuess will point you in the right direction.

Stay focused with Results in Context

KallOut displays search results adjacent to your selected search term in floating information palettes. Seeing your results in context, instead of opening a new window, avoids the disruption of constantly switching between applications.

Not bad! A quick view of the video and screenshots show what is quite possibly a very useful application. This installs in Windows and gives you this functionality across browsers and office applications. It could be a very handy utility indeed.

The CEO of KallOut emailed me to tell me about it and I will give it an install and possibly update this article with my findings. It’s a compelling product that fills a need of many people who are constantly having to use the web to research all sorts of things. If you have experience with it, let us know what you think.